EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The President of Mexico says she will sue a New York lawyer who reportedly accused her administration of being corrupt and her of being soft on a drug cartel.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo made her announcement on Monday in response to comments and a tweet from Jeffrey Licthman – the attorney for accused Sinaloa cartel leader Ovidio Guzman Lopez, who pleaded guilty to drug charges Friday in U.S. District Court.
“Apparently the president of Mexico is displeased with my truthful comments about her corrupt office and government. She can call as many hastily convened press conferences as she likes, but the people of Mexico (and myself), know she acts more as the public relations arm of a drug trafficking organization than as the honest leader the Mexican people deserve,” Lichtman wrote on X.
Sheinbaum on Monday said she would not get into a tit-for-tat with a lawyer that defends narco-traffickers. But “we will present a lawsuit for slander here in Mexico, through the Judicial Counsel’s Office, because we cannot let it go,” she said.
Border Report reached out to Lichtman’s New York office for comment and is awaiting a response.
The feud between an attorney that has represented such high-profile clients as John Gotti Jr. and Sinaloa cartel drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera and the leader of a country of 129 million people exploded on Friday. That’s when Lichtman client Guzman Lopez, the son of El Chapo, admitted to trafficking tons of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl from Mexico into the United States.
The attorney took exception to Sheinbaum criticizing the plea bargain. She publicly stated the U.S. says it doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, yet it negotiated with Guzman Lopez, also known as one of the “Chapitos,” or Little Chapos, who is a member of a cartel the U.S. has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Lichtman fired back questioning the stature of the Mexican government to get involved in drug trafficking cases in the U.S. He cited how Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, persuaded the first Trump administration to let ex Mexican Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos be tried in Mexico after being indicted in the U.S. on drug charges, only to see him freed shortly after.
Lichtman also drew a parallel between Osama bin Laden not being detained while living in Pakistan and the Mexican government not arresting another Sinaloa cartel drug lord, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. El Mayo lived “under their nose” for 40 years in Mexico, he told reporters.
Another of Lichtman’s clients, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, allegedly abducted Zambada in Mexico and flew him to the United States, where both were taken into custody by U.S. federal agents at a small airport in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
Sheinbaum on Saturday called Lichtman’s comments disrespectful to Mexico and said her Attorney General would be addressing the issue.
The lawyer responded with the tweet that is causing a firestorm in Mexican news outlets and social media.
On Monday, Sheinbaum reassured her large internet and Mexican television audience that her government is not in collusion with criminal organizations and that crime is going down. She showed charts showing the number of murders in her country — largely attributed to drug traffickers — has fallen in comparison to her predecessor’s tenure.
She also said that in the former defense minister’s case, which was taken to court in the U.S. based on years of work by Department of Justice agencies, “it is very clear there was innocence.”
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